Get frigging childcare

[JuniperJuly]

Yes another one of these posts.

Emergencies dont count obviously but otherwise, no you cant do your job and look after your young child at the same time.

This morning I had a 2hr teams meeting with an external person trying to organise an event for September. It was almost impossible. Every 2 minutes it was no darling, dont stick the pencil up your bum (true story. I dont care if she is on here), or telling me to hang on a second while she dealt with her child or her child shouting down the headset and being told he is sooooo cute.

I said that its awful when you get let down by childcare and she said that she was always planning on working with him at home. But she obviously isnt working! If shes like that on a teams call what is she like normally?

Last week I was on a group call and could hear someone's baby crying. Maybe she has a nanny or something, whatever, but then it became very obvious that the person wasnt actually on the call but had dialled in and buggered off, presumably to look after the crying child.

Ive now got to send an email to the person from this morning to discuss all the things we couldnt do this morning. Im not even going to bother putting in another meeting with her.

I've half a mind to send an email along the lines of
lovely to meet your child this morning. You had your hands full with him so we couldnt discuss everything so here is what I need. Its probably easier to do via email to limit distractions"
and cc her manager in.

Would that make me a bitch? Im so annoyed at the delay and the extra work it will give me.

How on earth do you think people (women) with children cope, and what do you think they do, if they have a job that they CANNOT do from home? THEY have to find childcare/pay for childcare!!

No. That was NOT such a 'brilliant answer' saying that women should be allowed to work from home 'because expensive childcare.' Many women are not in the fortunate and privileged position of having a job they can do from home. THEY have to find childcare, so why should other women (who do office jobs/admin jobs) not have to do the same? (So they can get back in the office!) That was not a brilliant post, that was a silly post!

Yeah this! ^ 👏

What a way to throw women back 100 years. You go girl!

slow hand clap.... 🙄

.

I mean if it can be addressed in an email why not do.so.to begin with- I fell like lots of meetings are a waste of time and it would obviously be helpful to her.

Inflexible job choices are not the fault of people who WFH though, maybe they have purposely pursued that area of work precisely with the flexibility needed in mind. I have teenagers and don't have a childcare issue anymore but I did see how working in the area that I do is more versatile when it comes to having a young family. My work is the kind that can be done at all hours of the day so I would get up very early on WFH days and then do the school run. It isn't a reactive job on a whole though and I absolutely knew this when making a lateral move with young children.

And @Goldenbear childcare costs are NOT the fault of the employer. ^

As I said, (and several others have said,) there will come a time - not too far in the future probably - where employers will be reluctant to employ women, at all. With the amount of breathtaking cheekyfuckery of some.

!

We have literally reverted back over 150 years
Employers will not be reluctant to employ women without facing severe penalties. It’s becoming easier and easier to prove discrimination.
They will be faced with a choice of not growing their business in the UK which many of them are opting for and will learn the hard way and come crawling back. Then they realise what they’re trying to avoid having to comply with also applies to themselves.
Or they will adapt to flexible working for everybody male and female the most forward thinking companies are already implementing those strategies

Are you a woman? If so, whatever happened to the sisterhood? You seem to want to blame women for the structural sexism that exists/has existed and are weirdly excited by pulling down those that have tried to circumvent this! I assume you don't have WFH so should anyone else? Equally, where are these office desks to go back to? Many companies have gained advantage from lowering their outgoings on office rent.

I think if the issues which were present in this meeting were a recurring feature then id raise it with their manager. It was one meeting and you dont know what was going on with this lady or her family on that day. Did you offer to reschedule or have a 10 minute break so she could try settle the family. Most wfh mums I know are knocking pans in and incredibly stressed and could do with support not criticism. Some, the tiny minority in my experience, take the utter p**s and its that which is the problem. I dont think this one meeting indicates if its an ongoing issue.

Although if lots of others are reporting this to her manager, the manager may be able to offer support/adjustments. Management is not primarily about getting people in trouble.

Mumsnet is funny. We are very good at supporting women in identifying abuse and encouraging them to LTB - but when these woman end.up alone, financially drowning, doing their best and busting a gut, we want them sacked for poor input in a.meeting. (just a generalisation - most are not saying sack her but are very keen on putting the boot in according to the language used in comments ive read)(and i know i dont know this ladies circumstances...... just trying to highligjt an irony I see that we could maybe address)

Why do people think that childcare is any more difficult now than it was say 20 years ago when my dc were little? Both my exh and I worked full time. We had to so that mortgage, bills etc were paid. 2/3rds of my income went on childcare but we needed the other 1/3rd so thats how it was. We went without holidays etc as there was no "spare" money. It eased up once they started school and there was only before/after school to pay for (fabulous childminder!!). Im afraid that when having kids this has to be taken into consideration. Oh and we were "working class" not high earners and had our dc 5 years apart taking cost of childcare into account. There was no wfh then and we prioritised the cost of care and paying our mortgage over holidays abroad and jeor things simple for a few years.

But the mother could have apologised upfront that she had childcare issues, or offered to rearrange the meeting, or delay the meeting ten minutes to settle her child.

I agree that one meeting doesn’t suggest it’s an ongoing issue, but first impressions count.

@smilingontheinside i agree. We took separate weeks off to cover the holiday period, pay for holiday clubs etc. we just knew that some weeks we would effectively not be earning any money due to childcare costs.

No one is productive if they are looking after kids and working at the same time, and their kids aren’t being properly supervised and often it’s tv or tablets they become addicted to.

Steelworks, I've just realised it was 30 years ago but same applies. Childcare is expensive but it's a cost that comes with having children and has to be taken into account. As one poster put it, women have worked so hard to be seen in the workplace and to be treated equally but some are undoing all that by expecting to wfh and look after their children at same time. If you want to be a stay at home mum and can afford that then great and your choice but if not then childcare has to be factored in. My parents and in laws were retired and I never expected them to take on care for my children. They had done their bit bringing us up and unless emergency cover I never put them in that position. My DC on the other hand expected me to look after their 1st dc on my day off every week. That was met with a "sorry no can do". I did step in if an emergency but no regular care.They did get help from their in-laws but that ended up causing resentment when it impacted on their lives/travel expectations etc something I didnt want to happen in our relationship. Yes it's hard and I think the OP is not BU to make it known that it was unprofessional, could cause problems with her side of the work. Wfh does not mean free childcare/ft mum with a bit of work here and there in between 🤷

Sometimes needs must though. DH once took DD aged 8 to work for the morning, it was pretty all men in the office and no one cared, in fact many spoke to her about what she was drawing, joked about helping them with projects as she was such a good Artist. It was fine, a one off the world didn't end.

Pretty much not "pretty all men".

Until Covid and the wfh hybrid took off for a lot of people we did just book childcare and manage.
yes it was expensive, yes sometimes I had to use my annual leave at times I didn’t want too but we did it.
Children shouldn’t be popping up on teams at all and should be in child care or old enough to be left alone all day. If your working you need to be focused

Honestly all this be kind nonsense is making life harder for people to do their jobs.

OP was unable to have a productive call to arrange logistics for an event as the person at the other end was distracted by looking after her DCs, and worse seemed to think OP might find this endearing. She wasted her time which doesn’t seem very sisterly to me.

As a result OP had extra work pulling her points in an email, and then presumably having ping pong back and forth until everything was confirmed. It would be nice as well if some people would do OP the courtesy of allowing her to be the best judge of whether a meeting is required and the optimum length for Teams calls.

I would be definitely be emailing OP and I would be highlighting this to your boss and I would be giving the lady a very concrete deadline to come back with full responses. If she doesn’t then I would raise it as a risk to delivery.

Employers are not charities ( actually I currently work for a charity and they are more draconian that many for profit businesses) and they pay employees to work the number of hours they are paid for - unless there are temporary extenuating circumstances, of which school holidays are not.

Nice try @Goldenbear BUT... The Sisterhood is a myth.

HTH.

I have no desire to support someone purely because we both have a vagina. As has been said, some women are sending us back a century. Women have worked so hard over the years to prove we are as worthy (as men,) and to get promotions, and to be heard and recognised.

And now we have a subculture of women in admin who are claiming they can't possibly stopping working from home and go back to the office 'because of the children.' Come off it. What if Covid had never happened? They would never have started working from home!

Fact is they have been spoiled and had it easy for 4-5 years, and they don't want things to change. The childcare issue is just a straw man. And as I said, millions of women who have jobs that are not office based, don't have the same good fortune of working from home, and looking after children at the same time. Inexplicably, THEY all seem to manage!

As I said, the cheekyfuckery and entitlement is off the scale, and the sooner 'working from home' is reined in the better. As many posters have said, no WAY can you do your job properly with children mooching around, playing, mithering, fussing, crying, demanding things, and interrupting you. Though I am SURE you will say YOUR children are little Angels who sit quiet for the entire 8 hours you are 'working.' 🙄

Anyway, 90% of almost 3000 posters agree with the OP (and me) that people need to sort childcare and stop having children at home when they are meant to be working, so this is all moot anyway, because you're wrong.

As has been said, millions of people managed before covid, so they can start to bloody well 'manage' now, sort out childcare, and get back in the office, and actually do some work!

I think part of the issue is that this situation wasn't an emergency, the woman blithely admitted that she'd always planned to work with her child there, wasn't apologetic and was disrespectful of the OP's time.

I mean seriously, calm down, you appear to have a kind of Working From Home Neurosis. I did suggest as an occasional thing, not the end of the world and frankly if you can shove all what you have to say in an email, why waste everyone's time with a meeting!

Funny you think it's only jobs in Admin that WFH as I don't know anyone that works at home in an Admin role. I have friends with a range of jobs including myself that WFH in a hybrid model, so Data security, Architecture, finance, lawyers, they work so hard, well over the contractural hours. I don't have an issue with my children as they are teens as I stated in my post above, considering one of them is an adult, they don't tend to need my attention and certainly don't sit in my office with me🙄

As I stated in my previous posts, in some hybrid posts there are not the desks to go back to as they have downsized to save money and desks are shared or the offices don't exit at all anymore You can tell you don't have any knowledge of office life as you clearly think anyone working at home is in Admin and that all these Employers have offices sitting empty, when they just don't!

I'm sorry that you are bitter about the lack of opportunity in your current position to WFH or perhaps when you were younger but no need to take it out on everyone else.

That’s definitely the case for my DH, who works for the Council as a civil engineer. They really don’t have the office space, so none of them will be going back to the office full-time.

It's the case for me and I would argue that the office is easier to work in as I have two screens, the space, the set up is much easier but someone else uses it on a different day.

I'm in a pretty new position so I knew what to expect but I didn't mind as have WFH before but actually there are benefits and disadvantages.

Because it was meant to be a discussion about options etc. You cant have discussions over emails but now Im forced to. What should have been a 2hr meeting will now be lots of emails going back and forth over a few days.